


Had We But World Enough and Time

by wanderingstoryteller



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: A Potential Future, Aging, F/F, Immortal Yaz, Immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 04:23:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18242321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingstoryteller/pseuds/wanderingstoryteller
Summary: It took them an embarrassingly long time to notice that Yaz was not aging. She and the Doctor were nearly a decade and a half into their travels, a decade into their marriage, and five years into parenthood before Yaz herself began to wonder.





	Had We But World Enough and Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoctorThasmin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorThasmin/gifts).



> This is a stand alone fic and not in the same universe as any of my other work. 
> 
> Over in my regular series 'No one ever said this life would be simple,' I've had a couple requests to make Yaz immortal. I decided to see what that would look like. I hope you all like it. Special thanks to DoctorThasmin for the immortality idea.

It took them an embarrassingly long time to notice that Yaz was  not aging. She and the Doctor were nearly a decade and a half into their travels, a decade into their marriage, and five years into parenthood before Yaz herself began to wonder.  

In their defense, the actual physical differences between a human twenty year old and a thirty five year old are not as visible noticeable as greater differences of age. Some people go grey very young, some get lines early, some put on weight or grow curvier, some gain a whole slew of aches. It is no always as visible or noticeable for everyone.

Women in Yaz’s family did not go grey until well into their fifth decade. If her mother’s old photos were any indication, she wouldn’t even see the first faint lines about her eyes until she was closer to forty. Yaz never seemed to gain any of the fuller curves to her hips or chest that so often came with time, but then again she was always running wasn’t she? Even carrying her daughters left little change to her figure. She did wonder about that but she’d gone to a very good OBGYN on the second moon of Caduceus. Her obstetrician had even given her a cream that _actually_ prevented stretch marks.

The not getting stretch marks bit had actually seemed more miraculous to her than the fact that the same hospital had been able to both make viable embryos with two eggs or that they could combine human and time lord DNA. She’s also been slightly awed by the lack of wait time on her appointments. Apparently in the future, at least on Caduceus, doctors were under, rather than over booked, so that patients would not be inconvenienced.

She knew that aging should have made her a bit more tired, a bit slower, hurt a bit more, heal slower. It was just that she never really had much time to think about it. She and the Doctor were always constantly in motion. In the midsts of living and running and laughing, there was no time to slow down.

Others in her life did actually notice, Yaz’s mum in particular. She never said anything. The truth was she thought that Yaz had simply lost track of time, that although fifteen years had passed for her they had not for her daughter. How else could she explain how her younger daughter, who remained in Sheffield, now looked older than the one that ran off to travel in a blue box.

Ryan also noticed, mostly because he first began to become aware of his own aging. It was the running that made him see it. He had always been able to easily keep pace with the Doctor and Yaz, seldom breathless, barely even winded. It wasn’t as if he suddenly slowed down in his thirties, it was just that he began to notice he was more tired after a sprint, that sometimes he was catching his breath as Yaz and the Doctor were talking excitedly about what to do next.

Graham never noticed Yaz’s lack of aging. He’d lived long enough that most young people seemed a bit like children to him after a certain point. He did wonder about Yaz’s healing. A broken arm took Yaz two weeks to heal instead of ten. A cold caught on the not so lost moon of Poosh knocked Graham and Ryan down for a week but only effected Yaz for a day. There were just so many things going on though and then his cancer came back and his thoughts turned to his own ending.

Ryan did not stay on the TARDIS for very long after Graham’s funeral, too many memories. He finally took the job UNIT kept offering him. The Doctor had been sad to see him go but she understood. Among other things, Ryan had been getting very serious with a woman in the science department there and the only way he could really give that a go was to stay on earth for a bit. Relationships seldom worked out between companions and earth bound humans. In the end, the ones that worked required either the love interest to become a companion or the companion to leave the TARDIS. Within a year Yaz and the Doctor were dancing at Ryan’s wedding.

In the end it was the Doctor who finally realized that Yaz had remained unchanged. It was a beautiful summer day in the suburbs outside of London. They were all in the backyard of the little house that Ryan and his wife had bought not long after Ryan became the director for Unit’s UK operations. Ryan’s wife was manning the grill and Yaz and the Doctor were excitedly cooing over the couple’s new infant. The Doctor and Yaz’s twins were busy running around being the small terrors that five year olds are so good at being. K-9 at least was watching them. Well it was more like one was riding K9 while he rolled after the other but that totally counted as him supervising them.

Yaz sat in ane of the cheap plastic yard chairs, carefully cradling Ryan’s infant son in her arms. At two months, the baby had just begun to learn to smile and was doing his best to imitated the grin of the strange woman holding him. The Doctor leaned over the chair and made as many faces at the baby as she could.

The small human wrinkled up his tiny nose and yawned, largely unimpressed.

Yaz giggled.

Without thinking about it, the Doctor looked at her wife. She seemed so perfect, so whole, so happy. Fifteen years of adventures had not left a single mark on her, except time and adventures always left marks on humans.

She looked across Yaz to Ryan. The new father was hurriedly getting a cloth ready in anticipation of possibly impending baby spit up. He had a slightly burn scar on his cheek from seven years before when he had been caught in an explosion on the Space Station Excalibur Nine. He wasn’t as lanky as he had been as a young man, he’d finally filled out the broad shoulders that had always made him look a little bit ungainly before.

She didn’t have the heart to tell him that the beard really wasn’t working. Then again he had a tiny infant so he may just have given up on shaving for a bit. When he smiled at his son, as he wiped away drool, very faint lines showed at the edges of his eyes. He was still Ryan, her Ryan but of course he’d matured. When the Doctor looked back at Yaz, her Yaz, only her wife’s eyes seemed a bit older.

The Doctor didn’t say anything then. She waited until they were back in the TARDIS, until the twins had been read their bedtime stories and tucked in. She waited until inevitably one child wandered back out of the nursery demanding another drink of water. She even waited while Yaz went to sing the restless child a lullaby.

When at last she and Yaz were sitting in the open door of the TARDIS drinking chai tea, feet dangling in the void, she finally brought it up.

“Yaz, I don’t think your ageing.”

Her wife grinned and tilted her head slightly. “You never have perfected the whole giving compliments thing have you babe?”

The Doctor reached out her hand to stroke Yaz’s face, brushing her thumb against her high cheekbones. “I’m not being metaphorical my love. I think you are actually not aging.”

Yax blinked. “How?”

“I’m not sure. It’s likely the TARDIS but I will have to run some tests and possible have a word with her.”

Yaz stared at her. The enormity of what the Doctor had just said both weighed on her shoulders like a millstone and yet freed a deep and lasting worry from her heart.

“You’re actually serious,”

“Yes.”

Yaz didn’t dare believe it, not until the Doctor had scanned her a lot of times in the TARDIS med bay, not until they’d popped by a future hospital for other scans, not until the Doctor had a very quiet conversation with her ship.

The finally talked about it, really talked about it, the next afternoon after they had put the twins down for a nap.

“It’s real then?”

“Yea, when I pressed her on it, the old girl admitted she’s been enfusing your life force with some of her own, adding a bit extra. She said she didn’t want to see me heartbroken again too.”

“Am I like Captain Jack then? Can I not die now?”

She shook her head slowly, “No, you can. You’ll heal injuries faster but if you die you won’t come back. She can bring you back from anything short of crossing the veil though. The thing that happened to Jack, the TARDIS can’t actually do that on her own. That was what Rose did accidently with the power of the TARDIS.”

Yaz looked down into her unsweetened chai. “And she just did it without asking?”

“Afraid so, she’s a sweet old girl but she’s never really understood boundaries.”

“Or informed consent apparently,” everything else aside, Yaz wasn’t pleased to know that someone, even a very old sentient time ship, had altered her body without asking her.

“No. She said she can stop doing it now, if you want her to. She can let you start aging again any time you ask.”

“I…” Yaz had been so overwhelmed by everything she hadn’t really thought through all the implications yet. “This basically means that now I might bury you, instead of you burying me, doesn’t it”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I never thought of it like that. It hardly seems fair does it?”

Yaz raised her dark eyes and considered her wife. “Death is hardly fair. If I get a choice though, I think I’m a bit better suited to that burden than you are.”

The Doctor tilted her head slightly. “I’ve lost more lovers than you have ever had my dearest.”

“Yea, but you were bloody mopey and unbearable about it. Remember, I’ve met some of your past companions. They told me what you were like after you lost River, hell they told me how badly you took losing Rose and she was just in a parallel universe.” Yaz reached forward to cover her wife’s hand with her own. “Babe, you’re a Time Lord, you grew up thinking you would live nearly forever, that you would have almost infinite time with those you loved. I suppose that makes you all the more a fool since you ran off to hang out with short lived species. Me though, I’m human. I was born expecting to spend my brief life constantly losing people to the simple flow of time.”

“Your getting very eloquent my dear,” said the Doctor.

“You’re the one that keeps taking me to see plays at the globe.”

“Well the head playwright owes me a favor so we do get a box for free.”

Yaz felt laughter bubbling up inside of herself. “God, I’m just so scared and happy at the same time. I thought I had maybe ninety years tops and now, I’ve got as much as I want, at least as long as I don’t fall in one of our adventures. I know now I have a chance to see our girls fully grown. I’ll see them go grey. I’ll see them regenerate. I can be there for them, really be there in the way you will be.”

The Doctor clutched her hand with two of her own. “Yes you will my beautiful, brilliant, perfect Yaz. You will see all of that and more.”

Just as quickly Yaz slumped. “It hurt so much to lose my Nan and then to lose Graham. I know it will gut me when my parents go. How can I face watching my baby sister get old and die. We are going to outlive Ryan and his wife and that tiny baby we held yesterday.”

“Yes.” The Doctor held her gaze, such ancient eyes in a beautiful young face.

“How do you do it?”

“Death won’t have me it seems and every time I draw new breath there are always bright eyes and inexpressibly wonderful humans waiting for me. Once it was Rose, and then it was a shining red haired little girl, then Clara with that incredible smile of hers, and then this time the it was you. ”

Yaz drank more of her cooling tea without really looking away. “What if I get tired, what if multiple lifetimes wear me down. Even if I walk all the way with you, I can’t just go when you do, not really. My religion forbids suicide. I mean muslims don’t make as big a deal out of it as  catholics do, but it is still cleary forbidden in the Quran. I don’t obey a lot of the prophets teachings but that is one I think I have to hold to.”  
“Starting to age again, if and when you choose to, won’t be suicide, it will just be finishing your time.”

“Who’s being eloquent now?” She added another hand, clutching both of the Doctor’s. “And what if all your remaining years aren't enough. What if no amount of time is ever sufficient? What if I stay until the heat death of the universe?”

“Then there will be a very charming viking girl who calls herself Me waiting for you.”

“Sometimes I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

“We’ve time now. I’ll be able to tell you all my stories.”

“All of them?”

“Well the non self incriminating ones.”

Yaz leaned forward, grabbing her wife’s face and pulling her into a desperate kiss. They were both utterly breathless by the time they pulled apart. “We may have close to forever but I still don’t want to miss a single moment with you.”

“Same.” The Doctor had that wonderful slightly feral smile she got when things were about to go in a bedroomy direction.

That hope was lost when there was a loud bang from somewhere else in the TARDIS. K-9 came hurriedly rolling into the kitchen.

“Doctor, asist, please assist.”

“What have they done now?” asked Yaz, already standing. Her daughters might be only five year olds but even humans that age were impressively creative little monsters, much less half Time Lord children.

“They have accessed the wardrobe,” said the robot dog.

That actually didn’t sound too bad to Yaz.

“They have constructed a giant slingshot with two crutches and some rubber tubbing. They are launching shoes into the cloister room.”

The Doctor’s grin got broader. “Oh my clever girls.”

Yaz sighed but couldn’t hide her smile. “Come on my love, let’s make sure they don’t do any real damager.”

There was another loud bang.

“Right, damage control it is, lead the way.”

Yaz went out first and the Doctor followed. She watched her wife and love walk through the halls of the TARDIS. Her stride was easy and loose, free of pain or stiffness. Her hair still flowed over her shoulders dark and rich and untouched by age. For the first time in longer than the Doctor dared recall, she felt a deep sense of calm and contentment settle over her.

She had left so many companions behind, lost so many lovers. There were no words to describe the relief she felt in knowing that time at least would not take her beloved Yaz from her. She knew that Yaz, not her, would pay the price for it. All the same, Yaz sounded equal to the task. For once, the future lay before her not shadowed by impending loss but vast and infinite and full of promise and she raced forward to meet it.


End file.
